Xolani Zekani, one of the stu­dent protest lead­ers, said they were also shocked to hear their peers were be­ing sent to Pollsmoor.

“You can’t ex­pose stu­dents to such a level of bru­tal­ity.

“Send­ing them to Pollsmoor will just put them in more dan­ger,” he said.

“We need sol­i­dar­ity from ev­ery­body. This is war against us.”

Zakani said: “The po­lice started the vi­o­lence (on Wed­nes­day). They knocked down stu­dents’ doors and ar­rested them in their res­i­dences. They shot tear­gas into rooms.

“Stu­dents have never been vi­o­lent.”

Some of the stu­dents who were re­leased on Thurs­day were also at the court yes­ter­day.

They did not want to be in­ter­viewed be­cause “how do we know that you will write what we say?”.

A large group of stu­dents had blocked the court’s en­trance, forc­ing any­body want­ing to en­ter to use the side en­trance.

Some stu­dents wanted to pre­vent pho­tog­ra­phers from tak­ing pictures.

One also tried to stop the Week­end Ar­gus re­porter, say­ing “there are bar­ri­ers”, even though they were protest­ing in a pub­lic space.

UWC said in a state­ment it would “use on­line plat­forms and other modes of learning to as­sist stu­dents in fi­nal­is­ing the aca­demic year in prepa­ra­tion for the fi­nal ex­am­i­na­tions, which can be writ­ten ei­ther in Novem­ber or in Jan­uary 2017”.

“(UWC) coun­cil em­phat­i­cally de­nounces the vi­o­lence, in­ci­dents of ar­son, de­struc­tion and in­tim­i­da­tion, and the con­tin­u­ous dis­rup­tions of the op­er­a­tions of the uni­ver­sity.

“Coun­cil re­grets the frus­tra­tion and trauma that has been ex­pe­ri­enced by stu­dents…

“Coun­cil and man­age­ment sup­port the call for free higher ed­u­ca­tion for the poor and fi­nan­cial mod­els to as­sist the miss­ing mid­dle.

“We urge the state to ex­pe­dite its pro­cesses and pro­vide feed­back to the na­tion on how it plans to ad­dress these is­sues given the crit­i­cal state of af­fairs,” the uni­ver­sity said.

yazeed.kamaldien@inl.co.za

PICTURES: YAZEED KAMALDIEN

#FeesMustFall pro­test­ers out­side the Bel­lville Mag­is­trate’s Court yes­ter­day where stu­dents from the Uni­ver­sity of the Western Cape were de­nied bail.